


Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)

by Imogen_Penn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4196274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imogen_Penn/pseuds/Imogen_Penn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Darcy had first moved into Stark Tower, Pepper Potts had sat her down in the living room of her suite and explained a few things. The basics, she had said, of surviving life with superheroes...don’t let Natasha pour your drinks; if you hear a weird noise in the ceiling, it’s always Clint; if you smell smoke, start yelling at Tony; and give Bucky Barnes a wide berth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)

**Author's Note:**

> This one goes out to marvelmoxie who gave me a Darcy/Bucky prompt, like, YEARS ago that spawned this story. I'm sorry it took so long. Let me tell you, writing Bucky is HARD.

When Darcy had first moved into Stark Tower, Pepper Potts had sat her down in the living room of her suite and explained a few things. The basics, she had said, of surviving life with superheroes.

There were many things she had expected: very detailed and airtight non-disclosure agreements, complex safety protocols, screenings that she would need to pass to get the appropriate security clearance. The much more quotidian tips were less expected, but no less sobering: don’t let Natasha pour your drinks; if you hear a weird noise in the ceiling, it’s always Clint; if you smell smoke, start yelling at Tony; and give Bucky Barnes a wide berth.

+

+

It was well after midnight, but she had always had trouble sleeping in new places. She was padding quietly into the communal kitchen to browse the fridge for leftovers, moving quietly and hoping desperately that Captain America (he had insisted on Steve, but it was going to take her more than a few days to get there) didn’t catch her in her ratty pyjamas. She didn’t realise that someone was standing about three feet away from her until the light from the open freezer reflected off his metal arm. She shrieked and threw the first thing her hand closed on at him in surprise.

It was a nearly full carton of ice cream.

So there she was, standing in the middle of the kitchen, her mouth hanging open in horror at the recently reformed assassin that had been the scourge of the underground intelligence world who was standing there dripping dairy product and scowling at her in the dim light.

She burst out laughing.

“Something funny?” came the incredulous low growl from the man standing in front of her.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped, trying to shove down her laughter. He did not look amused. “It’s not _funny_ it’s just…”

He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her.

“The universe keeps dealing me these weird hands,” she tried to explain, still shaking with something like adrenaline or shock, “like, for example, I taser some weird homeless dude and he turns out to be the god of thunder. Or, you know, I accidentally throw ice cream at a guy lurking in the kitchen, and he’s the Winter Soldier.”

He stared at her for a long moment and then she saw the very tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Weird hands?” he asked with an arched eyebrow, his metal arm glinting as he pulled his t-shirt off over his head and dropped the dripping mess into the sink.

And then he turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen. She couldn’t help but watch the way the muscles of his back rolled smoothly as he moved.

She blinked at the feeling of _emptiness_ he had left behind him in the kitchen.

For someone who had spent, by all accounts, a lot of time being a ghost, he took up a hell of a lot of space in a room.

+

+

She didn’t see more than a glimpse of his back around a corner for nearly a week.

“Hi Darcy,” Steve’s voice carried brightly across the living room where Darcy lay across the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons. A hint _too_ brightly, really.

“Hey Steve,” she said lazily, rolling up on an arm and willing herself not to give in to the temptation to sit up straight and turn off the TV. Captain American tended to inspire good behaviour, but Steve hated that kind of thing.

And then she sat up abruptly as she saw a dour looking Bucky Barnes standing beside him, glaring at her like he was still dripping ice cream.

Steve’s tone made more sense now. He always seemed to be somehow compensating for his friend. Darcy wondered if Steve could see the way it was making Bucky dig his heels in.

Well, he certainly didn’t look any less foreboding during the day at least.

“This is James Barnes, or Bucky, if you like,” he said a bit carefully, as Bucky’s glare deepened “I just thought I should introduce you properly, since he’s going to be staying with us….”

“We’ve met,” ground out Bucky, sounding like nothing more than a sullen teenager.

Steve looked over at him in shock.

“Yeah,” said Darcy, with a falsely casual shrug, “we go way back.”

“Uh…” Steve looked between the two of them, clearly at a loss.

Bucky was looking mutinously out the window.

“You guys wanna watch a movie?” she tried, as the awkward silence stretched into painful and took a left turn for excruciating.

“I’d love to,” said Steve immediately, and lord love him he sounded sincere about it, “but I’ve got a meeting with…I think a press agent? Or the press? Maybe just an agent…”

“Well that sounds…non-specific,” said Darcy, “You boys have fun.”

“I’ll stay,” said Bucky abruptly, and by the look Steve gave him, Darcy suspected that this was not going according to Steve’s capital “P” Plan.

“Oh,” he said, “are you sure you…”

“I can handle a movie Rogers,” Bucky said with a surprisingly humorous roll of his eyes.

Steve looked over at her in immediate concern.

“Yeah,” said Darcy, suddenly feeling oddly defensive at Steve’s expression, “I think that if he was gonna go postal on me it would have happened when I threw a carton of rocky road at him.”

 “You know what,” said Steve with a nervous grin, “I’m starting to suspect you might deserve each other’s company.”

“So,” Darcy started cautiously as Steve headed for the elevator and Bucky continued looming. “What’s it like to have Captain America as your babysitter?”

 “Better than a cell,” he finally said, dropping with a weirdly fluid motion into an arm chair.

“He means well, at least,” said Darcy, forcing her attention back to the screen full of on demand movie titles.

“Suppose so,” grumbled Bucky almost inaudibly, “He’s doesn’t think I’m safe.”

Darcy blinked at him in surprise.

His hand somehow snaked out to grab the remote from her without her noticing until it was already gone.

Darcy was really going to have to work on her brain mouth control; because what came out was “Do _you_ think you’re safe?”

He didn’t answer her. But a few minutes later, he got up, walked to the kitchen, came back with a couple of beers, and handed one to her without a word, and settled on the other end of the couch, her legs curled up on the couch just brushing his knee.

+

+

Darcy froze in the hall outside of the tower’s gym. She was looking for Clint because he had promised her an archery lesson, but she could hear Bucky and Steve having what sounded like a heated conversation.

"Not gonna go off the reservation again," Bucky’s voice was low and sharp.

 She thought maybe they were sparring, by the dull thuds and grunts that accompanied the harsh words.

 "Can you be sure? I mean, we still don't exactly know that...."

 "Sure enough. Don't need you mindin' me."

 "That's not what I'm doing," came back Steve's low voice, "I just...I don't always know how to help. I want you on the team Buck."

 "Might be your team, Rogers. But it’s gotta be on my terms."

 "You even know what your terms are, Buck?"

 "Just one, stop being s'god damned _careful_ , punk."

 Steve, apparently, responded by failing to pull a punch, by the sounds of a heavy body hitting the floor.

"That all you got?" came Bucky's voice, "I could keep this up all day."

By the time she saw them again in the living room, they were both bruised and bleeding, but lighthearted.

She grinned, and didn't say a word as they sat down across from her on the couch.

+

+

She was surrounded by people who had problems on the scale of "I was possessed by a Norse God" and "I'm still recovering from a month long hostage situation where I turned myself into a super hero," so she tried to keep her "I had a tough day at work" and "despite the free rent, my student debt doesn't seem to be getting any smaller" type problems to herself.

This usually worked out pretty well. The people she lived with tended to respect the gloomy silence of those around them. Eventually, Jane (the closest approximation to normal Darcy had) would lift her head up for air and they would drink cheap wine and vent all of the problems that they didn't want to bother the super people with.

Except Jane was out of town for the next month taking magnetic readings of the aurora or something. And Darcy had just been notified via facebook, that utter bitch, that the dude who had dumped her six months ago because he "wasn't ready for commitment" was engaged.

It wasn't that big of a deal. Not really. But that uncomfortable sensation of feelings that hadn’t entirely disappeared and a bruised ego was coiling and spiralling up inside of her, desperate to get out.

She was nearly at the point of hunting down Pepper in her office, who Darcy knew would politely listen to her problems, offer some brief words of comfort, and then apologetically announce that Darcy had made her late for a meeting with lawyers who were billing her at hundreds of dollars an hour.

Thankfully...maybe...someone else decided to intervene first.

She was shuffling down the hallway from her room towards the kitchen, planning on a good sulk with a bowl of ice cream and a sad movie, when an iron hard grip closed around her upper arm and dragged her into the elevator.

 When she managed to catch up to her abrupt shift in surroundings, she saw Bucky, left hand still firmly closed around her arm, looking at her with a stony expression.

 "What's up Bucky?" she asked very, very cautiously.

 He just raised an eyebrow at her and said nothing as the elevator opened and he pulled her down the hall.

 She followed mutely, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, as he pulled her into the gym and planted her in front of an ancient looking hanging sand bag.

 "What....?" she started.

 "Stay here," he said sternly, as he turned towards the cupboards along one wall.

 He came back with a roll of tape and said stiffly, "Right hand."

 She pushed it forward towards him like she was used to obeying his orders. She supposed she was in a sense, although generally his orders were non-verbal and something closer to "leave me alone".

He carefully wrapped the tape over and over across her knuckles and around her palm until he was satisfied and said "left" and repeated the action with the other hand.

 When he was done, he stood beside her.

"Bend your knees, about shoulder width apart. Make a fist, thumb on the outside, don't lock your wrist," he said, and she did.

"Hands up in front of your face like this," he demonstrated, “Now hit the bag, straight out in front of you," and she did.

"Arms on their own are weak," he said with a critical expression, "use your body, push into the bag with your legs and your hips" and she did.

"Again," he said.

And she let herself get lost in the rhythmic repetition, his voice low and steady as he corrected her stance or explained a hook or an uppercut. It was counterintuitive, but the more the tension built in her arms and legs, the more sweat that beaded on her forehead, the more her hands began to ache, the less she felt that little pit of misery in her gut.

Finally, maybe forty five minutes later, he said "that's enough." and stepped in between her and the bag, taking first one hand then the other, carefully unwrapping the tape, the fingers of his right hand gently prodding her hands for sore spots.

"Feel better?" he asked finally.

 And she did.

 She nodded mutely, looking up at him with what must have been a fairly dumbfounded expression.

 "You...this was...you did this to make me feel better?" she finally got out.

There was a weird moment where he was looking back at her, like maybe there was no other living being for miles around, but then his eyes cut to the side and he shrugged. "Sick of the crap you've been watchin'" he said shortly.

"Ah," she said, smothering a bit of a grin, "of course. Chick flicks and ice cream probably really harsh the whole dangerous assassin vibe you've got going on."

 He looked back at her with a carefully blank expression.

 "I'm not." he said finally, with a harsh edge to it that wiped all trace of a smile off of her face.

 "Not what?" she asked carefully.

 "Don't go in just to take out a target," he said, "never. Not anymore. Only take the shot when it can't be helped."

She let out a slow breath. It was the most he'd ever said to her in a stretch, and the most personal piece of information she'd learned about him by far. She got the feeling that one wrong step and he'd never speak to her again.

"Of course," she said as steadily as she could, "I know that. S'just a word, doesn't have to mean anything."

 There was a moment where she thought she'd put her foot in it, but the angle of his shoulders relaxed and the edge of a sort of resigned shrug skated across his face.

 "Words always mean something," he said, and then he turned and walked out the door.

 +

+

"You coming to the Pit tonight Darce?" Clint stuck his head around the corner into the living room where Darcy lay sprawled on the sofa, half watching some sort of sitcom on TV.

"What, and abandon my swingin' Friday social life?" she gestured dramatically around the empty living room.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said with an eye roll, "and you know your empty dance card is all your own fault."

"If you can call my resounding lack of appeal to the opposite sex _my fault,_ " she quipped at him, pulling herself to her feet and heading in the direction of her room to change.

"Oh it 'aint the lack of appeal darlin'," he said with a wink, "s'just that you probably haven't even set eyes on a man you don't already live with in a solid month. You gotta get out of the bubble more."

"I'm coming to the Pit aren't I?"

"You gonna dance with somebody Lewis? Feel some heat with somebody?"

"Come on bird brain, you know you stupid Avengers have ruined me for all men without abs you could grate cheese on." She was looking back in his direction as she moved for the hallway, and so didn't notice that it was already occupied until she turned back, coming face to face with arguably the most impressive set of abs in the tower.

Well, top three anyways.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her hands out in front of her to stop the collision pressing firmly against his ribs. "Sorry Bucky," she said, snatching her hands back with alacrity and tucking a piece of hair behind her ears.

He set her on edge, more so than usual these days, but not in a bad way.

Definitely not in a bad way.

The corner of his lip twitched in what Darcy had come to recognise was about as close to a smile as anyone got. "Take more'n you to make a dent in me," he said, and he was _looking at her_.

She floundered desperately for words, "You wanna come to the Pit?" it was a lame grab. Steve always asked and Bucky never came.

Which is why she could practically _hear_ Clint's jaw drop when Bucky shrugged with almost militarily precise nonchalance and said "Alright."

She supposed, upon consideration, that Bucky coming out to the bar was hardly the weirdest thing that the Avengers had to deal with in any given week, so they had quickly settled into their regular mode of behaviour at their favourite watering hole. Nat and Clint were yelling at each other near the jukebox, Jane and Thor were probably making out in a corner somewhere, and Steve was sitting a table nursing a beer as people came and went.

This was definitely the weirdest thing that had happened to Darcy this week. Probably this year. At least this month.

So instead of joining in the jukebox yelling and the inevitable dancing that followed, she was sitting across the table from Steve and _Bucky Barnes_. Bucky Barnes in a clean T-Shirt with combed hair and a jacket that made her think of James Dean.

Thankfully Steve was excited enough about Bucky leaving the tower willingly that he was holding up the conversation nicely. She didn't think either her or Bucky had said more than ten words together all night. Granted, that wasn't all that strange for _him_.

There was a pause in the music, as Clint and Natasha apparently come to some common ground on the selections. When it started up again, she couldn't recognise the tune. It sounded old fashioned, like a big band ought to be playing it somewhere.

"I used to know how to dance, I think," said Bucky, out of the blue, as if it was some sort of sudden and earth shaking revelation. And maybe it was. Darcy wasn't in the loop about what had become of that whole Russian brainwashing memory wipe thing.

"Yeah," said Steve with a slow smile that chased away the corners of strain that always boxed in his eyes these days. "You used to say it was only right to do it well, because you were never short of partners."

And Bucky was leaning back, relaxed in his seat, that tiny little twitch of a smile sitting at the edge of his lips, and she was feeling four drinks bold, so she said in a teasing tone, like Bucky was anyone else bragging at a bar, "Those sound like big words Barnes."

He raised an eyebrow at her, "Suppose they are," he drawled, finishing the last of his beer and setting it on the table.

And then he stood up and held out his hand to her.

"I don't know how," she said, with a slightly panicked look at Steve, who just shrugged with a pleased sort of amusement, but she found she was taking his hand anyways.

"Just follow," he said as he pulled her to the small dance floor, already crowded with people pretending they knew how to swing.

 Bucky, though. He _really_ knew what he was doing.

 Darcy clearly did not.

"Stop thinking so damn much," said Bucky, right beside her ear as she missed a step and collided with his chest.

So she tried it, and she quickly found that if she stopped worrying where her next step should be and where her hands should go, Bucky would figure it out for her.

As the song went on, she found it easier and easier to follow the tug of his hand and the pressure at her hip, and he in turn pushed and pulled her into more complicated spins and turns. By the end of it, she was breathless and dizzy and giddy with the fun of it. She was starting to believe that her dour and monosyllabic roommate was, in fact, the same man that Steve described as a lady killer.

When the song came to an end, and he turned her into a dip, his arm strong at her back, she could see that he was smiling. Not the little twitch that was the best she usually got, but an honest to goodness smile. It made him look years younger.

It made him look like an entirely different man.

Darcy realised she was still staring as he pulled her upright, the smile fading slowly off his face as he took a step back, but she couldn't forget what he had looked like when he wasn't brooding.

Or that he had looked like that at her.

 +

+

He never became what she would call a comfortable presence in her life, mostly because she didn't think he was ever really comfortable. Certainly not around her.

The one place he was comfortable, she was discovering, was in the field.

And maybe comfortable was the wrong word, but when he dove in front of her, his right arm pulling her to the ground, his left shrieking with sparks from falling debris that barely missed her, there was no question in his eyes, no wondering whether he was doing the right thing, no careful buffer of space.

"Alright?" he asked, something between a question and an order as he pushed her gently into a structurally sound archway.

She was breathless in a way that she couldn't blame entirely on the force of impact when she gasped out "Yes."

She sat there for what felt like hours, her arms wrapped around her knees, flinching as pieces of New York kept falling around her. But the archway she was crouched under was broad and strong and didn’t waver; the worst she got was a few bruises and scrapes from flying debris.

A bit of concrete and rebar had struck her just above the hairline, enough to raise a lump and cover the side of her face in blood, but she’d pressed her sweater to it, and it had stopped bleeding by the time quiet settled over the city.

She was fairly certain she didn’t have a concussion, although she was willing to re-evaluate, because she must have been imagining the look on Bucky’s face as he came sprinting up to her hiding place.

He crouched in front of her, eyes wide and worried as they danced across her and came to rest on her face.

“You’re hurt,” he said, reaching up towards the streak of blood down her face.

“I’m fine,” she said with a slightly wincing smile, “just a scratch.”

He didn’t really seem to be listening to her as he carefully ran his fingers over her forehead, his feather light touch sending a shiver down her spine.

“Cold?” he asked, “You’re in shock. I’m going to bring help.”

“Bucky,” she said reaching up to grab his hand as he moved to stand, “I’m not cold, I’m not going into shock I’m just…” she trailed off.

He looked at her, his head cocked to the side as he crouched back down beside her. “You’re what?”

She was having a hard time working out for herself what she was, but she knew it had something to do with Bucky. And the way that he said less than almost anyone she knew, but managed to communicate so much focused attention.

And she was a little shaky and off balance from crouching in the middle of a war zone, so she didn’t exactly process before she leaned forward and kissed him.

There was a moment where Bucky froze, unresponsive. She moved to pull away, but his hands wrapped around her shoulders and he pulled her back towards him and began systematically ruining her for the kisses of any other man.

At one point, he pulled her to her feet, pushing her back against the concrete, and she barely noticed, the way he was pressing into her mouth, his teeth catching her lower lip, low sounds she didn’t think he knew he was making falling out of the back of his throat.

She had a sudden sense memory of dancing with him at the Pit as he dropped a hand under her thigh and hitched her up against his hips. It felt easy and _right_ to move with him, to follow his lead. There was nothing cold or distant about him now. He didn’t move away as she pressed forward, exploring the give of his lips and the line of his teeth, he pushed back, the cold cement pressing into her back in sharp contrast to the heat of him against her.

And then she heard a low crackle of static coming from his ear. Someone must have said something to him on the comms.

He pulled away sharply, the loss of him making her gasp.

“I’ve got Lewis,” he said sharply, a hand against his right ear. He was still looking at her, and she found she couldn’t break his gaze, was afraid to. Like if she looked away no one would ever look at her like that again.

He would never look at her like that again.

“I’ll drop her at medical.”

The silence stretched out between them as he pulled his earpiece out of his ear and tossed it aside.

“Bucky…” she finally let out, barely more than a whisper.

It was enough to break whatever spell was hanging over them.

“Medical has set up at 72nd,” he said, cutting his eyes to the ground.

“James,” she tried again, putting a hand on his arm.

But he turned and started walking over the rubble towards the relatively clear street.

“Hey,” she said, her tone growing harsh as a desperate feeling started welling up in her throat, “stop.”

He paused, not looking back as she caught up to him. She stepped in front of him.

“This is really not a great time to be the strong silent type,” she tried.

“Got nothing to say,” he said stiffly.

“Bullshit,” said Darcy. “I’ve got a river of words for you, you must have a couple for me.”

“Nothing worth hearing,” he said, crossing his arms.

She wanted that place back, kissing him, dancing with him, where things came easily.

“Stop thinking so damn much,” she cut out at him, and stepped forward, snaking her arms around his waist.

After a moment, his arms uncrossed and wrapped around her shoulders. She felt his head come to rest on top of her hair.

“I can’t,” he said after a moment, breathing heavily as he stepped away. “I can’t. _I won’t_.”

“Won’t?” Darcy asked in bewilderment, the landscape was changing to rapidly for her to keep up.

“Darcy,” he said, finally looking at her again, “I’ve got nothing…there’s nothing _good_ here. Not for you.”

“What? I…How can you even…” she stumbled, but he had turned away and was striding faster than she could keep up, and no matter how much she called his name, he wouldn’t stop.

+

+

After things had settled down again and the team was done with debriefs, she looked for him. Tried to find her moment to confront him.

She didn’t know what she wanted to come from it, or (maybe more honestly) didn’t know if she was ready to face what she wanted from him. But everything felt so _unfinished_ the way things were, and she didn’t shy away from confrontation.

She didn’t see him come in when the rest of the team came back to the tower.

She didn’t see him in any common areas for a solid week.

She took to walking by the gym at hours when he and Steve used to work out. Steve was there, but no Bucky.

Almost two weeks had gone by before she couldn’t bear the waiting any more. She stopped Steve coming out of his room.

“You have a minute?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“Sure Darcy,” said Steve with a concerned look, “come in.”

She settled down on his couch as he sat across from her in a chair.

“Where’s Bucky?” she asked, without preamble.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “But he’s okay. He’s just…taking some time to himself.” He said carefully.

“Did he say why?” she asked in a very small voice.

“Wasn’t big on talking about it,” said Steve, sounding tired. “But I think part of it was me. The man I knew…that’s…that’s not who he is anymore.”

“But you’re…you’re his family,” Darcy said, “You were the only one he really talked to.”

Steve smiled wanly at her, “Not the only one. He didn’t say much when he left, but your name came up.”

He was trying to make her feel better, she knew that, but it was only making her feel worse. “Steve I…I think it’s my fault. He’s alone out there, and it’s my fault.”

“Oh, hey no Darcy,” he said immediately pulling her to her feet into a warm embrace. “It’s not your fault.”

They stood there like that for a long time, Steve muttered soothing words into her hair, but all she could think of was the feeling of Bucky pressed against her and the look on his face when he said “There’s nothing good here.”

+

+

She kept hoping that maybe in a few weeks in a month, in six months, he would walk back through the doors of the tower, but he never did.

And yet, she found it very difficult to move past that moment, standing in New York rubble.

She dealt with it by throwing herself into her work, like it would somehow assuage her guilt at driving Bucky away from the only family he knew. In every inch of muscle she added, in every night she spent at work rather than out at a bar.

And she found that there was satisfaction in this for its own sake.

She had always technically been an employee of SHIELD, but apparently it started to get some notice, the amount of hours she was logging in the gym, the extra training courses she was taking in field support, the positive reviews coming out of the labs she worked in with Jane and a few other scientists in SHIELD’s brain trust.

She started getting different assignments, at first just running equipment and information to and from civilian contractors.

And then planning and supervising speaking engagements for members of the science team in the continental U.S.

And then planning security for the science teams.

And then running security ops for the science teams.

And then running some ops for field agents.

Until she found herself, without really knowing how it happened, on her way to the north of Russia with strike team gamma running an infiltration into a weapons smuggling organisation headquartered deep in the middle of nowhere.

She was huddled up against the freezing winter air in a mobile ops van in the woods a half mile away from the massive old stone building that housed the operation, eyes glued to her screens.

Something was off, she could feel it. She had meticulously prepared this operation, she knew who should be where, when. She knew how heavily armed they were. She had studied their faces, backgrounds.

She was watching Agent Fipps moves through the building, the pinhole camera on his stolen uniform sending her scratchy images of the people walking past.

There were too many people around.

And then, she caught sight of a face in a moment of clear transmission.

It wasn’t on her list, but she knew perfectly well who it was. One of the organisation’s hit men, who should have been miles and miles away being distracted by a diversion another team had created in Moscow.

They knew her team was here.

They probably knew _she_ was there.

The tech they were looking for had probably been secreted out weeks ago.

The op was belly up, and she frantically began to make plans to get her team out of there.

“Abort,” she said quickly and as calmly as she could manage into the coms. “You’re blown, extraction plan bravo. You see anyone coming at you looking twitchy, you blow yourself a hole and get out. Nothing to salvage on this one.”

She watched the tracking dots on her blueprint make subtle shifts, moving for exits.

Fipps and Marko made it out, their speed suggesting they had transport. They would go to ground for a while, calling for an extraction out of the country when they were sure they had dropped any tails.

It looked like Thorpe and Heller were moving together, but had run into some resistance.

She swung her chair over to another keyboard and frantically tapped out a stream of code at the wireless jack her team had clipped to the electronic system on their way in, setting off absolutely every alarm she could find.

She could hear the dull wail of it off in the distance. And then there was a bright orange burst of an explosion. Her screen flickered and she held her breath, but the green dots of Thorpe and Heller were clear and running.

She let out a breath, “See you on the other side,” she transmitted for anyone still in range, “ops out.”

She dropped her headset and moved to the front of the van, aiming to get the hell out of there.

All of a sudden, she was thrown to the floor as the van lurched like something had run into it. The sharp clatter of an automatic weapon fired closely enough to set her ears ringing.

“Shit shit shit,” she muttered to herself, pulling the quick release on the ops van CPU and hard drive, shoving the compact unit into her go bag as all the screens around her went dark, leaving her in the dim glow of a single blue light as she drew her side arm.

Someone was hacking at the latch on the back doors. She trained her focus and her aim on the door, finger hovering over her trigger.

Finally the doors swung open, and Darcy barely managed to avoid squeezing off the shot as the man behind the door smoothly swung aside, hands empty and behind his head in a gesture of non-aggression.

But that wasn’t really the surprising part.

Standing there, in front of several fallen men wearing the black fatigues of the arms dealers, lying beside motorcycles, wheels still spinning where they lay, was James Buchannan Barnes.

“Wh…” was all that she managed to get out as she lowered her weapon in shock before he surged forward, grabbing her arms and pulling her out of the van, her go bag in tow behind her.

“They know you’re here. More will be on the way. We gotta move.”

This wasn’t exactly the time for a catch up.

She followed him briskly, throwing her bag across her shoulders, gun still drawn and armed, she headed for one of the bikes.

“Too loud,” said Bucky, pulling her towards the denser woods, “I know a place.”

Once, after nearly fifteen minutes of as close to a flat out run as they could manage in the woods, she tried to speak again, but he turned back with a harsh look, pointing to their east, where she could just pick out the flickering light of a vehicle.

They turned west and kept moving.

Darcy was in pretty good shape, but there was a stich burning in her side and the leaden feeling of her legs was telling her she couldn’t keep up this pace for much longer as Bucky continued to cut through the forest in front of her.

All of a sudden, running flat out, Bucky swerved to the left and disappeared from sight.

Darcy froze in her tracks, the deep black of the forest immediately closing in around her.

And then his head came into view in the underbrush.

“Hurry,” he hissed.

She saw now that he had jumped into a low gulley.

At the end of it there was a rusted hatch that nevertheless opened soundlessly as he turned it.

On the other side was a low tunnel that they moved through quietly. He placed her hand on his back and then moved silently through the darkness as she followed. Trying to focus on moving carefully and being silent, and not on the bunch and stretch of his shoulders under the jacket that was far too thin for the weather.

She fruitlessly hoped he didn’t notice when she stumbled.

At the end of the tunnel was another door and a small room. With a click and a low whir, a bare bulb flickered to light above them, lighting the concrete walls.

It was a safe house, that much she could tell. Canned food, weapons, a low cot, small walled off section to the side that suggested there was a water source enough for a bathroom.

“How in the hell…” Darcy started half-heartedly.

“Old KGB bolt hole,” he said stiffly, “lots got filled in, some fell out of the system.”

He wasn’t looking at her as he turned to the rickety shelving on one wall, rummaging until he found an old tin cup and heading for the door on the other side.

“Wait just a goddam minute,” said Darcy, his obvious avoidance rasping against her edgy adrenaline frayed nerves. “That is _not_ what I meant.”

He froze, but didn’t look back at her.

“How in the hell did you _find_ me. How did you even know to look for me? Where the hell have you _been_!”

She could hear the low release of breath as his shoulders drew up, tense and stiff. “You couldn’t have stayed with the science team?” was all he said, in a resigned sort of tone, before he slipped into the small walled off portion of the room and closed the door behind him.

It wasn’t much of a barrier, and she could hear a thin trickle of water through the door and what sounded like an unnecessary amount of splashing.

It gave her a few moments, at least, to gather her thoughts. She double checked her go bag to ensure that anything with a transmitting function was firmly switched off. The equipment she had with her would certainly be helpful in getting them a ride out of here later on, but for now they needed to stay hidden and stray electronic signals were a really easy was to get found.

She settled carefully onto the canvas cot, drawing her leg up in front of her and setting her chin on her knees.

Bucky knew she had been with the science team up until the last few months. He knew she was going to be here. Which had to mean that he was still in touch with SHIELD. And that he had been following her.

She was glad, underneath it all, that he hadn’t cut all his ties. She hoped it meant he was still in touch with Steve. She thought maybe he was, because Steve had always studiously avoided any conversations about Bucky with her, probably so he didn’t have to lie to her.

She wasn’t as sure how she should feel about the fact that he had been following her. Or what, exactly, she was going to say to him when he came out of the bathroom. Or whether he would be running off and leaving her here alone by morning.

But she could see immediately, the moment he opened the door, that there would be no conversation tonight.

“We’ve got four hours until sunrise,” he said abruptly, not meeting her eyes as he pulled a dusty blanket off of a shelf, shook it out, and tossed it to her. “At first light, we’ll head for Severodvinsk. It’ll be safe for you to check in from there.”

“So long as we don’t pick up any tails,” she added almost automatically.

He raised an eyebrow. “It’ll be safe.”

“Bucky…” she started.

“Get some sleep,” he interrupted her, his tone short but not unkind, “I’ll sit first watch.”

He turned away from her, settling to the floor, his back against the cold cement wall and his side arm in his hand as he stared fixedly at the door.

She didn’t think it was going to be possible, lying on the stiff cot with a thin, scratchy blanket, listening to the sound of Bucky breathing in the cold, damp air. But as the adrenaline of the op started to seep out of her system, she found herself drifting off, falling into dark and unsettling dreams that she wouldn’t more than half remember by morning.

+

+

She woke with a start, taking a moment to realise where she was. And who she was with.

Bucky was exactly where he had been when she had fallen asleep. She wasn’t stupid enough to think he had woken her for her turn at watch.

“Time to go?” she said, swinging her feet to the floor and blinking bleariness out of her eyes.

He nodded at her shortly. She hadn’t undressed, so she simply strapped her own weapon back on her hip, folded the blanket she had used, and stowed it back on the shelf.

Bucky watched her with a raised eyebrow and an expression she couldn’t decipher.

Last night she had been caught up in the adrenaline of an op falling apart, the surprise and relief and being rescued, and the otherworldly feeling of being back in Bucky’s presence when she never thought she would see him again.

Today though, reality was seeping in. She was pretty sure she was furious.

“So what’s the plan,” she asked tightly.

“There’s a vehicle depot about two miles off,” Bucky said, taking in her expression with curious eyes, “Should be able to hotwire us a truck and make it to the city before nightfall.”

“Fine,” said Darcy, “After you.” She made a thoroughly sarcastic gesturing motion at the door.

His lips tightened into a harsh line as he wrenched the door open and stalked out.

They moved at a more reasonable pace now, just fast enough to make it impractical to keep up conversation. They spoke nothing more than hushed directions as they jogged through the woods.

The farther they moved in silence, the more time Darcy had to think, and the more certain she became that yes, angry was the correct label for her emotions right now. So he didn’t want her being around him. Fine. But he got to keep tabs on her? Shadow her movements, follow her halfway around the world? He could have been dead in a ditch somewhere for all she knew. It was a thought that sometimes woke her in a cold sweat at night. But the asshole had probably been watching her from somewhere down the block.

She held back as Bucky efficiently knocked out the two guards that they found at the vehicle depot. She may have discovered a skill at running operations, but she wasn’t a point man.

She climbed up into the cab of the truck just as Bucky appeared from under the hood, the engine running. He sped out down the dirt road, focused and moving quickly until they hit paved highway. Then he slowed, leaning back in the seat, approximating a casual driving posture.

And he spared a glance over at Darcy.

She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, looking at her with her arms crossed and her jaw set tightly. She told herself she didn’t care.

“You’re angry,” he finally said carefully.

“You’re _damn_ right I’m angry,” said Darcy fiercely.

“I’m sorry,” he said, a hint of tentativeness. She felt herself soften towards him ever so slightly.

“If I could have done it without you having to see me, I would have,” he finished.

No, not softening. Exploding.

“You think I’m angry because you let me see you?” she cut out at him. “You’re an asshole James Barnes.”

“Then why…” he started.

“I’m _angry_ ,” she said, her voice rising, “because two years ago you walk out and I’ve spent _years_ thinking you could be dead or injured somewhere. I’ve felt like it was my _fault,_ that I drove you away from your _home_. And this whole time you’ve still been with SHIELD? You’ve been just _fine_ , having chatty phone catch ups with Steve? Stalking me like I don’t know how to do my job? Jesus Christ Bucky, you think I’m mad because you finally showed up for once?”

“Oh,” was all he said, after a long still moment. Darcy was breathing like she’d just run a mile.

“I hoped…” he said hesitantly, “I hoped you would forget about me.”

“Yeah? Well I didn’t” she said venomously, and then turned her head, looking resolutely out her window and letting a chilly silence overtake the truck.

It was a long and tense ride into Severodvinsk. The moment they had ditched the truck outside the city and made it to an apartment that Bucky apparently kept in the city (she had stopped asking about how he managed to have safe houses everywhere), she took a page out of his book and stalked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her leaving him sitting on the bed.

She took her time washing the grime of running through the woods and a long day of travel off. She pulled her com equipment out of her bag and called in. Unfortunately, there was no way to get her extracted until mid-morning the next day.

Finally, there was no further excuse she could find to stay locked in the bathroom.

When she opened the door, Bucky was still sitting on the bed. Motionless, looking down at his hands.

He looked up at her, and for just a moment, in the fraction of a second before he shut it down, she could see the anguish in his eyes.

It made it hard to hold on to her rage.

“I owe you an apology,” he said finally, after they stood there, just looking at each other for a long moment.

Darcy just looked at him evenly.

“I should have explained. I should have told you where I was going. I just…I never wanted to bring you into this. I didn’t want to bring you down.” He was curling in on himself, and it was a sharp contrast to the way he always seemed to take up so much space.

And she didn’t want to make him smaller.

“I get it,” she said finally, “I mean, I get that you were trying to do what you thought was right.” She took a deep breath as he looked up at her.

She hadn’t really noticed before, but he didn’t look as haunted as he had when she had last seen him. Like maybe he had found something like stability in the last few years.

“You were wrong though,” she went on, “You didn’t bring me into this. I walked in with my eyes open. I make my own choices Barnes.”

He nodded, swallowing slowly, his chin tipped up to look at her.

And she couldn’t hold on to her anger anymore, because he was here, and he was looking at her again, like she was the only person in the world and _god_ had she missed the way he made her feel.

“I missed you.” It slipped out, her throat catching on the syllables as if she was trying to pull the words back before they escaped. She didn’t know what good they would do anyways. She knew perfectly well that he planned to let her get on a plane out of here tomorrow by herself.

He stood up abruptly, suddenly alarming close to her. His right hand reached up tentatively, his thumb brushing her cheek. She realised, almost absently, that he was wiping away a tear.

“Darcy,” his voice was wrung out and tired, “I should walk away right now,” he said finally, his hand falling to cup the curve of her neck. “Tell me to walk away,” he said, almost desperately.

“Stay,” she said, her voice barely a breath as she looked at him with wide eyes.

This time, it was him who closed the distance between them.

It wasn’t careful, between them. Wasn’t perfect. But the edge of his teeth against her skin was riding a knife’s edge between pleasure and pain, and one cold hand and one hot were gripping her flesh like they would never let her go, and she was so ready for him when he slid into her with a noise deep in his throat like he had just been shot in the chest.

He moved in her like dancing, like he knew all the steps, and she followed without having to think on it.

And when it was over, sated and sweaty, he simply curled his body around hers like a shield and slept. She lay awake for a long while though, listening to his heart beat slow under her hand, feeling his chest rise and fall against her, and she wondered if this was what drowning felt like.

+

+

The moment she woke up and found the bed next to her empty, she knew exactly what was going on.

She sat up with a start, clutching the sheets to her chest, wondering if he even had the good grace to leave a note.

She barely stopped herself from shouting when she found him sitting stiffly in the rickety chair by the door, looking at her steadily.

"Jesus Christ," she let out, shaking off the shock, "I thought you were..." but she stopped herself, the relief that had been creeping up her spine vanishing immediately as she saw that his boots were on and his go bag was sitting beside him on the floor.

"Oh." She managed, as she realised he was as good as gone anyways. "Well at least you didn't vanish in the middle of the night." She said darkly, "Although you'll have to agree that that's not really saying all that much about you Barnes." There was venom in her tone, and she didn't care to disguise it.

"I don't..." he paused, swallowing heavily. "Tell me what to say," he finally said with a defeated slump to his shoulders "tell me what to say, and I'll say it."

 "No." said Darcy simply, a little incredulously, whether at him or herself she wasn't quite sure. "Because I'm not going to let you feel better about this. If you honestly think, after all this, that my life is worse with you in it, that walking out that door is really what you should do, then that's your call to make, but I'm not going give up any more goddam pieces of myself to you to make it easier."

"I don't  _know_." He cut out, white knuckled grip tensing on the arms of the chair. "You...you makes things so...I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do." He looked like a caged animal, his eyes wide and terrified, looking at her in fear, begging for her help.

She let out a long slow breath. This was so far above her pay grade. Maybe he was right. Maybe his past, who he was now, was too much for her.

She thought, for a half second, about telling him he should go, validating all the worst things he felt about himself. Letting him fade back into the soldier, the machine. If she was letting her anger and frustration take the reins, it was easy to say he was being mechanical about this, putting tactics and pros and cons about what he wanted, _who_ he wanted.

And then an alarming simple and obvious thought came to her, and it nearly took her breath away.

“I won’t stop you,” she said evenly, “if you really want to go. But I think you already know exactly what you want to do."

He looked at her in surprise, his head cocked to the side in a question.

"It's real simple Bucky," she said, settling back against the pillows, feeling completely confident and comfortable in her surroundings for the first time in years. "If you really wanted to take off again, if you really thought that was best, you would have been out that door without a trace long before I woke up."

He just looked at her, like a deer frozen in headlights, for a long while. And then finally "I don't want to go," he said, low and simple, but like a damn bursting as the tension in him released and he slumped back against the chair.

"I know." she said evenly, still not entirely sure how this thing was going to play out, and unwilling to let herself hope to hard until she did.

He looked at her with a calculating expression. "You got older," he said, "while I was away."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

He rolled his eyes. "You look beautiful Lewis, and you know it. That's not what I meant."

"After two years, you're gonna have to explain it to me soldier." she said, trying to smother a silly grin at the way he called her beautiful without a second though, like inherent fact long since memorized.

"Back when I first knew you, you were...unsettled, skinny roots in shallow soil." the corner of his lip quirked up.

"Poetic, Barnes," she said, her arms crossed and voice level even though something effervescent and glorious was rising in her. "And what am I now?"

And that full-fledged Bucky Barnes smile that she had only ever seen once before broke across his face like a sunrise. "You're a goddam tree."  

"I am stronger," she acknowledged, rolling out of the bed with the sheet wrapped around her and stepping between his knees, and then amended "strong enough."

He sobered slightly, but his hand reached out to grip her waist as he looked up at her. "I'm going to be bad at this," he said, meeting her gaze and willing her to understand how seriously he meant it. "I'm not going to be...easy."

"But you'll be worth it," she said, taking his face between her hands. "Besides," she murmured as she leaned forward, her hair curtaining around them as her lips nearly brushed his. "I can weather it. I've got roots now." She closed the last distance, feeling his smile against her lips like sunlight on green branches.

 


End file.
